


The Hand that Beats the Beast is the Hand That is Lost to the Beast

by sweetNsimple



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Dark Will Graham, EXPLICIT TRANSPHOBIA, Hannibal spoils Will in his own twisted way, M/M, Manipulative Hannibal Lecter, Post-Season/Series 01, Pre-Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter, Trans Male Character, Trans Will Graham, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23335771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: After Will Graham was found innocent and released from the Baltimore State Hospital, he began his long seduction of Hannibal to finally put the monster in his place and have his revenge. A 'friendly' session with Hannibal soon revealed two small problems with that plan:1. As much as he loathed every breath Hannibal took, he could not help but love him.2. As much as he loathed every breath Hannibal took, there was one man he hated even more.That man was Dr. Frederick Chilton.
Relationships: Will Graham & Hannibal Lecter, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 196





	The Hand that Beats the Beast is the Hand That is Lost to the Beast

**Author's Note:**

> BLATANT transphobia. Like, Dr. Chilton refused to acknowledge Will's needs regarding his physical and mental health in relation to his gender. I am not trans but I really love Trans Will, so I will create Trans Will content.  
> ... On that note, please let me know if I mess up.  
> ALSO, WARNING: Will discusses his Hell Week - as he prefers to call it - or menstrual cycle, as others would refer to it. Just in case that is a trigger for some readers, please keep in mind that Dr. Chilton is a GRADE A PIECE OF TRASH.

When Dr. Lecter asked him, “Do you fantasize about killing me?”, Will wanted to say _yes_ , and to mean it with all of his twisted, broken heart. 

But for all that the game he was playing right now was a series of lies and concealed truths, what was hissed between gritted teeth was, “Come now, Dr. Lecter, you can’t think you’re _that_ special, can you? You aren’t the _only_ person I think about killing. As a matter of fact,” he offered a flash of a bitter, beastly grin, “You aren’t even the _first_ person on my list.” And it was the _truth_.

Even though Dr. Hannibal Lecter, that fucking _monster_ , had left Will to suffer and take the blame for Hannibal’s own crimes, for all of Will’s trust and faith that the psychopath had destroyed, for all that he _killed Abigail Hobbs_ , somehow – just somehow – Will found him somewhat less abhorrent than the character he had been forced to deal with at Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Dr. Frederick Chilton had been unforgiveable in his handling of Will. Will had demanded two things in return to subjecting himself to Chilton’s tests: Don’t talk to Dr. Lecter about Will and do _not_ call Will _that name_. 

“But it _is_ your birth name, is it not?” Dr. Chilton had questioned with one eyebrow superiorly raised, cocking his head up, _brazen_ in baring his neck because what he presumed to be a predator was safely on the other side of a barred gate. “Your mother and father gave you that name. You see, I find the topic of Gender Identity Disorder to be rather dull, honestly… However, in _your_ case, I believe this could explain a great deal in relation to the crimes you have committed.”

Will had wanted to grab Dr. Chilton by the back of his neck and _bash his smarmy face_ into the bars of his prison cage. Gender Identity Disorder was an outdated term which had no place in 2014. Will had already transitioned by the time the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees had removed GID from the DSM-V in 2012.

The purposeful misgendering of Will Graham had continued to the very last day Baltimore State had housed him as Dr. Chilton had led him out of the hospital and departed with a nervous (because of Dr. Lecter, not Will) farewell of, “Enjoy your freedom, _Ms. Graham_ , lest the Chesapeake Killer come calling… again.” 

In the present moment, Dr. Lecter looked surprised for part of a second, but quickly blinked the unexpected emotional response away. “I admit,” he said, voice smooth and unruffled, “I _did_ feel special, as you said. I wonder who could be higher on your list than even myself, who you believe has wronged you in every way.”

“Oh, you have,” Will said, sickly sweet as he pushed himself out of his chair and rounded toward the ladder. In the olden days, pacing the upper levels as Hannibal watched him from below had made him feel secure, _safe_ , as foolish as it seemed in the present moment. Now, he tried to stay level with Dr. Lecter – mimicking his stance, holding eye contact, establishing himself as Hannibal’s equal in every conceivable way. With the rage from remembering Dr. Chilton flowing through him, he climbed up and drifted along the bookcases.

Hannibal, like in days long gone by, stood from his own chair. Not to follow Will up the stairs of course, because that was Will’s safe haven – had been until the day Will had broken free of a police vehicle and come to these bookshelves to hide, begging for Dr. Lecter’s help like a small child desperately asking unknown adults to lead him home again. How innocent, how naïve he had been. 

Now, as like before, Hannibal simply watched Will move, sometimes walking so that the span of the room did not come between them. Somehow, the upper level remained Will’s ‘safe space’, for all that Will could be safe from Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

“It’s funny, Dr. Lecter,” Will said, not looking at the man, “You have wronged me in every way… Every way, but _one_. The most important one, I have found.”

“The most important one?” Will could hear the inquiry in Dr. Lecter’s voice, but also that the older man already knew what ‘the most important one’ was. He just wanted to hear Will say it. From there, he would want to manipulate Will, fester that hatred he felt for someone else that was not Hannibal. 

Will could see it now, how Hannibal’s specific and carefully calculated speech and actions might lead Will to redirect his ire and suspicions onto someone else. How Hannibal might try to coerce Will to act upon his hatred and rage toward another life. 

_This is his design_ , Will knew, _not to kill me himself to save his own life, but to have me take life so that I will change irrevocably_. After all, that was what Dr. Lecter had done with his clients. He and Jack had had a field day reviewing some of his client profiles in secret, how simple insomnia and anxiety had ballooned into night terrors and overwhelming paranoia. Those were the failures, Will imagined, the individuals who could not morph into unique and sophisticated killers like Hannibal, though never equal to him. 

The problem was that Dr. Lecter had already changed Will irrevocably and now Will was out for Dr. Lecter’s head on a platter. 

Will gave himself over willingly to Dr. Lecter’s manipulations. “My gender identity. My _manhood_. My masculinity,” he hissed. 

“Ah,” Dr. Lecter said, as if he had not already known. “Someone has contested your identity as a man – in the hospital, perhaps?”

“Don’t play coy with me, Dr. Lecter,” Will drawled, rather _rudely_. He enjoyed the small way Dr. Lecter’s jaw ticked when someone was not utterly polite to him. He watched out of the corner of his eye as Hannibal’s expression tightened for the smallest of moments. “You know who it was.”

“Dr. Frederick Chilton has never been very modern in his approach to the LGBT community or their rights,” Dr. Lecter allowed. “For him, differentials from what is considered ‘normal’ all have a psychological foundation, whether the deviation be sexual identity, Sadism/Masochism, or… gender identity.”

“It was more than my being a man having a psychological foundation in not having my mom around growing up, or feeling that being seen as a man would make me feel superior to women,” he said, just to list some of Dr. Chilton’s theories, “he took _pleasure_ from not acknowledging me as a man. He _smiled_ whenever I corrected him about my name, he _giggled_ , like a little school girl, whenever he used the wrong pronouns, and he looked so, so, _so_ happy whenever he got to use my dead name in front of others. He enjoyed himself.” He clenched the railing in both hands. 

A sharp bark of laughter escaped him as he smiled malevolently down at the doctor, who calmly stared back. “Would you like to know what happened whenever it was my Hell week, Dr. Lecter? For someone who was convinced that I was a woman, suddenly, I wasn’t allowed to have tampons or pads because _men have no need for those things_.”

Dr. Lecter’s entire body seemed to become one long line of tension. “He treated you with incredible indignity and was horribly discourteous to you and your needs.”

“In other words,” Will mused, sauntering another round amongst the bookcases, “he was rude.”

“Extremely so,” Hannibal agreed. “You never should have been treated that way. Regardless of how you were born or the biological manifestation and necessities of your physical body, you are a man. A man who should have been afforded the right to proper menstrual – ‘Hell’ week,” he corrected when Will’s eyes shot to him, “absorbents and medication.” He paused in thought. “Were your testosterone injections interrupted at all?”

“No,” he said, “but only because I threatened to go public about it.” He had almost missed his first shot by the time Dr. Chilton had reluctantly given in. 

“But not about the horrible mistreatment you suffered in all other areas concerning your identity?”

“I had to pick my battles, Dr. Lecter,” he said with fake charisma. “I could sleep in a bed of my own blood. Bleach got out most of the stains. Do you know what happens to trans men who stop taking T? Especially men like me, who still have ovaries? Sure, I would more than likely get to keep my facial hair. My voice wouldn’t change from what it is now. My dick won’t shrink.” He took petty joy in saying ‘dick’ to someone as proper as Dr. Lecter, but it was short-lived as they had already discussed such a long time ago how Will had chosen to name his genitalia, including the part of himself a woman might typically call their ‘clit’. “But my body will change. Become softer, more feminine. There are trans men who don’t mind that, some who wouldn’t change it given the chance, but, me? I hated it, before I transitioned. I hated all of the soft, willowy parts of myself that were seen as ‘feminine’… _sexy_ , if you were to talk to the football players at my high school.” They had all thought Will to be _really fucking weird_ , but everyone had been in agreement that they’d _hit that_ , and Will had taken to wearing bulky clothes to hide the curves and slopes that just didn’t feel right. 

“I despair to disillusion you; however, we have been to enough social gatherings together and travelled the same social circles for me to say with full conviction that there are those who consider you to be sexually appealing as you are now, as well as several other unpoetic and poetic descriptions.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere with me, Dr. Lecter.”

“No. Honesty and straightforwardness have always been best with you.”

“Incredible, how you recognize that, and yet still boggle at how I feel toward you.”

“You feel a great deal of rage and hatred toward me for what you believe I have done to you.”

“ _There it is again_. ‘What you believe I have done’. It is a clever way to address what we both know without agreeing with me and implementing yourself.” 

“However,” Dr. Lecter ignored him, “you feel a great deal more rage and hatred toward Dr. Chilton, for how he attacked your identity and mishandled your physical and psychological needs as a result.” 

“It’s almost as if you do understand me. I can’t imagine how we could have ever fallen out, Dr. Lecter.”

“I hope we can someday again be friends, Will,” Dr. Lecter said, dropping his voice a few octaves to sound sincere. He even managed to look somewhat contrite. “Despite all that has happened in our past, I still think fondly of you and the good times we have had together.” 

“Do you, Dr. Lecter?” Will asked, his own voice a whisper. He was trying to play the long game with Hannibal, lure him in and catch him, serve him to Jack Crawford and the FBI with a list of his crimes and victims. Yet, there had always been a problem with this plan. Before it had even been implemented, there had always been one small detail Will had kept locked inside of his own mind.

“Did our relationship ever mean a _damn thing_ to you?” Will almost begged to know. “Because you must have realized that you were my safe haven. I viewed you as my, my protector, my equal, a good man. I recognized an edge of darkness in you, something I could not understand at the time, but accepted that we all carry demons on our backs and thought that ours, at least, were compatible. I came to you, when I had nothing else. Every time, when I needed someone, I looked for _you_ – and, all along, I was nothing but your play toy. Your scapegoat.”

The little, heavy secret was locked inside of his heart, actually.

“Not,” he added, with a forced smile thrown in Hannibal’s direction as Will put one hand flat against the bindings of medical books, grounding himself, “that you would need a scapegoat for anything, would you? You never did anything wrong. I only _believe_ that you did.”

Will paused when the timer on Hannibal’s desk went off.

“Looks like our time is up. Doctor,” he said, descending the stairs. 

Dr. Lecter actually glowered at the small clock he kept beside his chair. “It does appear so. For now.” 

Will gathered his coat. “For now,” he echoed hollowly. He felt unbalanced by the can of worms he himself had spilled. He had inspired this entire rant, and yet found he was not ready for the impact it had on him.

The small, painful secret in Will’s chest was felt much like a growing tumor, most days.

The secret was that… Will had been in love with Hannibal. 

For all that Will called it a secret, he knew that Hannibal was aware of Will’s feelings as Hannibal fostered his codependency. As Hannibal let Will suffer unknowingly through the terrifying and painful symptoms of encephalitis, as he implemented Will as a psychotic serial killer, and even as he continued to deny any part in Will’s suffering, he had known that Will’s heart was on his sleeve, reluctant but ready to deliver to Hannibal. 

And Hannibal? Hannibal had let Will’s heart fall to the floor and rot. 

~::~

It was four in the morning and Will was still awake. This was normal. He very rarely slept through the night anymore. He might fall unconscious around six and then wake up at eight and that would round up to six hours of sleep in the past three days and be considered a good week.

At four in the morning was a very odd time to have visitors. Nonetheless, Will went from being outside in the back yard with his pack to going inside and finding a very unexpected visitor in his living room, toting a dead body.

The dead body was Randall Tier. 

“I believe you have been looking for him?” Dr. Lecter asked.

“I could call Jack right now,” Will said, tipping his hand and revealing the game. But, then again, if Dr. Lecter had been this careless, Hannibal must already have some inkling of Jack and Will’s plans.

“I would be gone by the time he got here,” Hannibal pointed out, “and you would have to explain why there is a corpse in your home.”

“No one believes how an ear got in my sink yet, thanks to you,” Will retorted. “Or how parts from several different victims ended up on my lures.” For all that he had been acquitted, this was a very sore spot between him and the public at large. “What, exactly, do you expect me to do with this?”

“We are going to string him up,” Dr. Lecter said, “and relieve some of the stress you have been carrying around with you since you left Frederick’s company.” Inexplicably, he pulled out a paper mask from behind his back. It was Dr. Chilton’s face. 

Despite himself, Will found that he was smiling. He tried to force it down, remind himself that this was bad and that he would not do this, he would _not do this_ …

But, oh. Did he _want_ to. 

“In the barn,” was what he said, instead of anything moralistic or sensible. The man was already dead.

At least Will hadn’t murdered him.

“We can string him up in the barn,” he reiterated, then looked to Hannibal to make sure he agreed.

Hannibal smiled the smallest bit. “Lead the way.”

~::~

Jack called him in to the museum where Randall Tier had worked, looking ten years older than he was and weary of the world. Jack was obviously exhausted of such twisted displays of murder and mutilation.

Will saw in the scene Randall’s becoming. He had always wanted to be an animal, a vicious predator of fangs and claws. Here, now, he was finally what he had felt inside. 

Will could relate to Randall, on some levels he did not want to address out loud. His body had betrayed his true identity, as Randall’s had. At the same time, Will thought it would be easier to be a beast than to be trans. To be a beast was as simple as wandering into the woods with teeth bared. To be trans was to fight society at large for the right to use the bathroom, the right to be addressed with the proper pronouns, the right to simply be as a man without everyone addressing him as a _trans_ man, as if it was so extremely important to make that distinction. As if he was not really a man at all, but an _attempt_ at manhood. 

“Is this my becoming?” Randall asked, a remnant phantom of Will’s vivid imagination. “Or yours?” 

Will thought that it was more than likely both.

Not far from him, Hannibal watched him with heavy lidded eyes. None of his pride in Will showed, and yet Will _felt_ it, as easily as if Hannibal had verbally praised him. Between them, Jack was none the wiser. Hopeful, though. After all, Will was his man, and the Chesapeake Ripper would be apprehended as long as Will and Jack played their parts. 

It felt so odd and yet not odd at all to be playing an entirely new part in this theater piece of intrigue. It was bloody and vengeful and full of anger from places inside of himself that he had been afraid of. Where was his fear? Dr. Lecter had gobbled it up, of course, and now Will was emerging from the chrysalis Hannibal had so patiently tended to with acid and distrust. 

Hannibal drove Will away from the museum, the two of them quiet for some time.

“I require Frederick for some personal matters,” Hannibal said to him. “You cannot kill him now, not yet. You can help me destroy him, however.”

Will considered this. “Destroy him how?”

Hannibal smiled, just the smallest bit. “We are going to out him as the Chesapeake Ripper. It will be quite a scandal, I assure you. The evidence will be undeniable.”

“Yes,” Will said. Then, with greater venom, “I want him to _pay_.”

In tears. In fear. In sweat. In imprisonment. In death. Mostly, however, in _blood_ , like the rivulets Will had bled in Frederick’s care. 

Caught in his thought, he startled when a light touch grazed his forearm, then drifted over his wrist to settle over his hand and squeeze him lightly. He followed the hand over his own up to Hannibal, whose eyes remained on the road.

“You deserved better than him,” Hannibal said. It did not cease to surprise Will how bitter and offended Hannibal sounded on his behalf. 

He was, strangely enough, flattered.


End file.
